Steven Soderbergh's new movie Magic Mike has turned greased-up A-list buttocks into cinema gold: the tale of the male stripping fraternity has taken $39m in the US in its opening weekend. Bare bums are big business, but it hasn't always been this way as a quick glance over the history of the "genre" will tell you.

We all know the nude male form is essentially ridiculous, built only for floppy comedy. Hollywood recognised this quickly, and kept sexy male stripping to a minimum in early cinema. Even by the 1960s, this attitude remained. So when Oliver Reed and Alan Bates got it all out in 1969's Women In Love, their naked frolicking had to be dressed up as "wrestling".

It wasn't until the 1980s that male stripping became a "thing". Arnold Schwarzenegger had spent most of the 70s walking around in budgie smugglers, and Michael Ontkean went full chilly burlesque on the ice in Slap Shot, but it was only in the 80s that others caught up: a male performer serving up his penis on a tray to Tom Hanks in Bachelor Party, and Michael Keaton getting an eyeful in Mr Mom. Stripping even made it to the Oscars with John Cleese's Russian-spouting, baggy-briefed performance for Jamie Lee Curtis in the triple-nominated A Fish Called Wanda. But they all obeyed the first rule of male screen stripping: nobody wants to see the bits.

The movie which turned the world of shedding clothes for cash into wholesome family fun came in 1997 – the Citizen Kane of kit-offery; the male stripper movie against which all others must be measured: The Full Monty. Seizing on the innate ridiculousness of the male body and trussing it up in a red thong, Mark Addy's quivering form showed men that they too could shed their clothes and be pointed at by women. Giggling women, granted, but when your box office is $258m, who cares!

The instances of A-list women playing strippers are legion: Rita Hayworth in Gilda, Demi Moore in Striptease, Natalie Portman in Closer. But after The Full Monty that balance was redressed. OK, it was just Ben Affleck having a go in Forces Of Nature, and it's probably kinder if we just breeze past that. So now here's Magic Mike, a film to make the "genre" legit. That said, the first rule for any would-be screen Chippendale remains the same as it ever has: keep your tongue in your cheek and junk in your jocks. You're not in a French film.